The Lion's Share by Arnold Bennett (booksvooks TXT) 📕

Audrey's French and of her tips. Audrey listened, proud because she could understand so well and answer so fluently.

The sun, which in May shone on the courtyard for about forty minutes in the afternoon on clear days, caught these two creatures in the same beam. They made a delicious sight--Audrey dark, with her large forehead and negligible nose, and the concierge's wife rather doll-like in the regularity of her features. They were delicious not only because of their varied charm, but because they were so absurdly wise and omniscient, and because they had come to settled conclusions about every kind of worldly problem. Youth and vitality equalised their ranks, and the fact that Audrey possessed many ascertained ancestors, and a part of the earth's surface, and much money, and that the concierge's wife possessed nothing but herself and a few bits of furniture, was not of the slightest importance.

The concierge's wife, after curiosity concerning tennis, grew confidential about herself, and more confidential. And at last she lowered her tones, and with sparkling eyes communicated information to Audrey in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

"Oh! truly? I must go," hastily said Audrey, blushing, and off she ran, reduced in an instant to the schoolgirl. Her departure was a retreat. These occasional discomfitures made a faint blot on the excellence of being a widow.


CHAPTER XIII


THE SWOON

In the north-east corner of the Luxembourg Gardens, where the lawn-tennis courts were permitted by a public authority which was strangely impartial and cosmopolitan in the matter of games, Miss Ingate sat sketching a group of statuary with the Rue de Vaugirard behind it. She was sketching in the orthodox way, on the orthodox stool, with the orthodox combined paint-box and easel, and the orthodox police permit in the cover of the box.

The bright and warm weather was tonic; it accounted for the whole temperament of Parisians. Under such a sky, with such a delicate pricking vitalisation in the air, it was impossible not to be Parisian. The trees, all arranged in beautiful perspectives, were coming into leaf, and through their screens could be seen everywhere children shouting as they played at ball and top, and both kinds of nurses, and scores of perambulators and mothers, and a few couples dallying with their sensations, and old men reading papers, and old women knitting and relating anecdotes or entire histories. And nobody was curious beyond his own group. The people were perfectly at home in this grandiose setting of gardens and fountains and grey palaces, with theatres, boulevards and the odour and roar of motor-buses just beyond the palisades. And Miss Ingate in the exciting sunshine gazed around with her subdued Essex grin, as if saying: "It's the most topsy-turvy planet that I was ever on, and why am I, of all people, trying to make this canvas look like a piece of sculpture and a street?"

"Now, Miss Ingate," said tall red-haired Tommy, who was standing over her. "Before you go any farther, do look at the line of roofs and see how interesting it is; it's really full of interest. And you've simply not got on speaking terms with it yet."

"No more I have! No more I have!" cried Miss Ingate, glancing round at Audrey, who was swinging her racket. "Thank you, Tommy. I ought to have thought of it for my own sake, because roofs are so much easier than statues, and I must get an effect somewhere, mustn't I?"

Tommy winked at Audrey. But Tommy's wink was as naught to the great invisible wink of Miss Ingate, the everlasting wink that derided the universe and the sun himself.

Then Musa appeared, with paraphernalia, at the end of a path. Accompanying him was a specimen of the creature known on tennis lawns as "a fourth." He was almost nameless, tall, very young, with the seedlings of a moustache and a space of nude calf between his knickerbockers and his socks. He was very ceremonious, shy, ungainly and blushful. He played a fair-to-middling game; and nothing more need be said of him.

Musa by contrast was an accomplished man of the world, and the fact that the fourth obviously regarded him as a hero helped Musa to behave in a manner satisfactory to himself in front of these English and American women, so strange, so exotic, so kind, and so disconcerting. Musa looked upon Britain as a romantic isle where people died for love. And as for America, in his mind it was as sinister, as wondrous, and as fatal as the Indies might seem to a bank clerk in Bradford. He had need of every moral assistance in this or any other social ordeal. For, though he was still the greatest violinist in Paris, and perhaps in the world, he could not yet prove this profound truth by the only demonstration which the world accepts.

If he played in studios he was idolised. If he played at small concerts in unknown halls he was received with rapture. But he was never lionised. The great concert halls never saw him on their platforms; his name was never in the newspapers; and hospitable personages never fought together for his presence at their tables, even if occasionally they invited him to perform for charity in return for a glass of claret and a sandwich. Monsieur Dauphin had attempted to force the invisible barriers for him, but without success. All his admirers in the Quarter stuck to it that he was in the rank of Kreisler and Ysaye; at the same time they were annoyed with him inasmuch as he did not force the world to acknowledge the prophetic good taste of the Quarter. And Musa made mistakes. He ought to have arrived at studios in a magnificent automobile, and to have given superb and uproarious repasts, and to have rendered innumerable women exquisitely unhappy. Whereas he arrived by tube or bus, never offered hospitality of any sort, and was like a cat with women. Hence the attitude of the Quarter was patronising, as if the Quarter had said: "Yes, he is the greatest violinist in Paris and perhaps in the world; but that's all, and it isn't enough."

The young man and the boy made ready for the game as for a gladiatorial display. Their frowning seriousness proved that they had comprehended the true British idea of sport. Musa came round the net to Audrey's side, but Audrey said in French:

"Miss Thompkins and I will play together. See, we are going to beat you and Gustave."

Musa retired. A few indifferent spectators had collected. Gustave, the fourth, had to serve.

"Play!" he muttered, in a thick and threatening voice, whose depth was the measure of his nervousness.

He served a double fault to Tommy, and then a fault to Audrey. The fourth ball he got over. Audrey played it. The two males rushed with appalling force together on the centre line in pursuit, and a terrible collision occurred. Musa fell away from Gustave as from a wall. When he arose out of the pebbly dust his right arm hung very limp from the shoulder. No sooner had he risen than he sank again, and the blood began to leave his face, and his eyes closed. The fourth, having recovered from the collision, knelt down by his side, and gazed earnestly at him. Tommy and Audrey hurried towards the statuesque group, and Audrey was thinking: "Why did I refuse to let him play with me? If he had played with me there would have been no accident." She reproached herself because she well knew that only out of the most absurd contrariness had she repulsed Musa. Or was it that she had repulsed him from fear of something that Tommy might say or look?

In a few seconds, strongly drawn by this marvellous piece of luck, promenaders were darting with joyous rapidity from north, south, east and west to witness the tragedy. There were nurses with coloured streamers six feet long, lusty children, errand boys, lads, and sundry nondescript men, some of whom carefully folded up their newspapers as they hurried to the cynosure. They beheld the body as though it were a corpse, and the corpse of an enemy; they formulated and discussed theories of the event; they examined minutely the rackets which had been thrown on the ground. They were exercising the immemorial rights of unmoved curiosity; they held themselves as indifferent as gods, and the murmur of their impartial voices floated soothingly over Musa, and the shadow of their active profiles covered him from the sparkling sunshine. Somebody mentioned policemen, in the plural, but none came. All remarked in turn that the ladies were English, as though that were a sufficient explanation of the whole affair.

No one said:

"It is Musa, the greatest violinist in Paris and perhaps in Europe."

Desperately Audrey stooped and seized Musa beneath the armpits to lift him to a sitting position.

"You'd better leave him alone," said Tommy, with a kind of ironic warning and innuendo.

But Audrey still struggled with the mass, convinced that she was showing initiative and firmness of character. The fourth with fierce vigour began to aid her, and another youth from the crowd was joining the enterprise when Miss Ingate arrived from her stool.

"Drop him, you silly little thing!" adjured Miss Ingate. "Instead of lifting his head you ought to lift his feet."

Audrey stared uncertain for a moment, and then let the mass subside. Whereupon Miss Ingate with all her strength lifted both legs to the height of her waist, giving Musa the appearance of a wheelless barrow.

"You want to let the blood run _into_ his head," said Miss Ingate with a self-conscious grin at the increasing crowd. "People only faint because the blood leaves their heads--that's why they go pale."

Musa's cheeks showed a tinge of red. You could almost see the precious blood being decanted by Miss Ingate out of the man's feet into his head. In a minute he opened his eyes. Miss Ingate lowered the legs.

"It was only the pain that made him feel queer," she said.

The episode was over, and the crowd very gradually and reluctantly scattered, disappointed at the lack of a fatal conclusion. Musa stood up, smiling apologetically, and Audrey supported him by the left arm, for the right could not be touched.

"Hadn't you better take him home, Mrs. Moncreiff?" Tommy suggested. "You can get a taxi here in the Rue de Vaugirard." She did not smile, but her green eyes glinted.

"Yes, I will," said Audrey curtly.

And Tommy's eyes glinted still more.

"And I shall get a doctor," said Audrey. "His arm may be broken."

"I should," Tommy concurred with gravity.

"Well, if it is, _I_ can't set it," said Miss Ingate quizzically. "I was getting on so well with the high lights on that statue. I'll come along back to the studio in about half an hour."

The fourth, who had been hovering near like a criminal magnetised by his crime, bounded off furiously at the suggestion that he should stop a taxi at the entrance to the gardens.

"I hope he has broken his arm and he can never play any more," thought Audrey, astoundingly, as she and the fourth helped pale Musa into the open taxi. "It will just serve those two right." She meant Miss Ingate and Tommy.

No sooner did the taxi start than Musa began to cry. He did not seem to care that he was in the midst of a busy street, with a piquant widow by his side.


CHAPTER XIV


MISS INGATE POINTS OUT